The former New England Patriots coach fired the latest shot at the NFL owner as their media spat continued this week
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Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick in 2024.Credit : JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP via Getty
Robert Kraft may be out of sight, but he was on Bill Belichick’s mind once again this week.
Belichick, 73, took another thinly veiled shot at his former New England Patriots employer during an interview with the Boston Globe on Thursday, Aug. 21 when he was asked what he’s found satisfying about college football versus the NFL, since leaving the pros to become the head coach at the University of North Carolina late last year.
“There’s no owner, there’s no owner’s son, there’s no cap, everything that goes with the marketing and everything else, which I’m all for that,” the six-time Super Bowl champion coach said.
“But it’s way less of what it was at that level. Generic NFL teams, you have the owner, president, general manager, personnel director, college director, pro director, cap guy, some other consultant, then head coach. I’d say when we had our best years in New England, we had fewer people and more of a direct vision. And as that expanded, it became harder to be successful.”
Belichick and Kraft, the Patriots’ owner, have sparred in the media in recent years since the longtime Patriots coach left the team in January 2024.
Belichick ended up sitting out the 2024-25 NFL season, and then taking his first-ever college coaching job last December.
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Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft in 2002.ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty
Most recently, Belichick took umbrage with Kraft’s comments on a podcast with former players Julian Edelman and Rob Gronkowski, telling them that he was “taking a huge risk” by hiring Belichick as the Patriots’ next head coach in 1999.
“I think getting Bill Belichick to come to the Patriots in 1999 was a big risk and I got hammered in the Boston media, but he was with us for 24 years and we did okay,” Kraft said during his June appearance on the Dudes on Dudes podcast.
Belichick immediately shot back in a comment to ESPN, clarifying that it was him taking the “risk” by leaving a head coaching opportunity with the New York Jets to instead coach the Patriots, where he, Kraft, and quarterback Tom Brady became the nucleus of the NFL’s most successful dynasty throughout the 2000s and 2010s.
“As I told Robert multiple times through the years, I took a big risk by taking the New England Patriots head coaching job,” Belichick said. ”
I already had an opportunity to be the head coach of the New York Jets, but the ownership situation was unstable.”
Belichick left New England after losing records in three of his final four seasons with the team following Brady’s departure. The Patriots were 4-13 without Belichick last season.
The decorated former NFL coach will make his debut with the North Carolina Tar Heels on Monday, Sept. 1 when the team opens its college football season against the TCU Horned Frogs.
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